L'heure pour entreprendre!

Every investor has seen a pitch that has made them wince. When pitching, it pays to plan to think big and plan to scale, but also to have a sense of how to go about that realistically. The biggest mistake most young entrepreneurs make is underestimating the difficulty of the market in the Middle East and North Africa. Here are versions of some of our favorite approaches, some exaggerated, some not:

« We will capture 100% of the market; everyone will want to use our product. » (or any percentage over 10%). [tweet this]

« We don’t need a marketing strategy, we’ll gain 1 million users in a year just via word of mouth. » [tweet this]

« We plan to be making $10 million in revenue by our third year, worst case scenario; it’s in the spreadsheet. » [tweet this]

« Monetizing is easy. Even though our portal is targeting a small market, we don’t need sales, we’ll just use online advertising. » [tweet this]

« We’re like AirBnb but more social, with a FourSquare component, focused on restaurants in Dubai. » [tweet this]

« We don’t really have any competitors; no one’s ever thought of this before. » [tweet this]

« The model is already proven in the U.S., so we’ll just do exactly what they’re doing, but in the Middle East. » [tweet this]

« We are not focused on revenue. Instagram never made revenue, but it sold for a billion dollars. » [tweet this]

« We’re building the Pinterest of the Middle East; Pinterest will have to acquire us to enter the market. » [tweet this]

« We don’t have a product, but it’s a great idea. We can launch and succeed in two months if we get investment. » [tweet this]